Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the south-west-facing slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a low ring of tumbled stone sits almost invisibly in the rough boggy pasture, overlooking the valley of the Owbaun River.

What remains of this circular hut site measures just 2.6 metres across, its collapsed drystone wall, the kind built without mortar, relying entirely on the careful placement of stone against stone, now reduced to a scatter no more than 0.3 metres high. A possible entrance gap of around 0.8 metres survives on the southern side, and the interior, small as it is, remains level underfoot.

The site does not stand alone. A second hut site lies a short distance to the west-northwest, and an enclosure, a defined area of ground bounded by a wall or bank that may have served to contain animals or mark out a working space, sits roughly 12 metres to the west. Together, these features suggest not a single isolated shelter but something more like a small cluster of activity on the mountain, though when that activity took place, and by whom, the surviving remains do not say. Hut sites of this kind appear across upland Ireland in contexts ranging from prehistoric settlement to post-medieval booley huts, the temporary summer shelters used by farmers who drove their cattle to higher ground during the warmer months.

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Pete F
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